


Improbable

by PreciselyVex (CrashEdit)



Category: Patrick Melrose (TV)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Class bias, Drug Use, M/M, Pining, use of a racial slur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 18:14:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15200576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrashEdit/pseuds/PreciselyVex
Summary: “Unless, of course, you’d rather play the game?”“Game?” The word, as spoken by Patrick, had an ominous ring to it -- which pretty much defined most of what intrigued the man of late.  “I thought we were gonna fix?”“And we shall. Doesn’t mean we can’t play the game first.”





	Improbable

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as always, to the fantastic Baker St. Mel for Betaing! Much love for fixing my misplaced commas (as well as a myriad of other missteps, errors and lapses of judgement!)
> 
>  
> 
> WARNING:  
> The sex in this fic takes place while both of the participants are under the influence of drugs.  
> While enthusiastic consent is implied, it's not explicitly shown, and the very fact that they are high may lead some to interpret these acts as inherently non-consensual.  
> If that sounds like you, or if you are sensitive to these topics for any reason, it's probably best to pass this one by. :-)

 

 

“In the drawer?”

“I told you, Johnny, yes.”

“Bedside table?”

“Hardly going to put them in with the kitchen cutlery, am I? Although that might save time if one were feeling particularly suicidal…”  
“Bit messy, isn’t it?”

“Death by cutlery? I should think so.”

“No, Patrick, I mean the drawer with the drugs.”

 

The drawer, the left-hand bedside table drawer, contained things that one might expect to find in it: a mostly-empty cigarette pack, a paperback, a torn condom wrapper - which Johnny considered for far longer than he should have - also, the stub end of a joint, some loose change, and a torn scrap of newspaper with a number scrawled on. Beyond all else, though, what dominated this drawer was a glittering and sincerely astonishing number of pills. Not in boxes and blister packs, like proper pharmaceuticals, and not in a handful of baggies, like improper ones, no. This was a bedside table drawer positively _lined_ with what looked to be a few hundred random capsules and tablets of many colors and shapes, rolling around loose and rattling noisily against the antique wood.

“It’s bloody overwhelming,” Johnny said, as Patrick entered the room, a bottle of whiskey to his lips.

“It’s bloody brilliant,” Patrick said, punching the last word as he passed the bottle to Johnny. For a moment, both men simply stared into the drawer, mesmerized, until Patrick broke the spell. ”Right. So anyway, by all means, help yourself - there’s bound to be a bennie or two in there, ” he said, offhand, and then pausing for effect, he turned. “Unless, of course, you’d rather play the game?”

“Game?” The word, as spoken by Patrick, had an ominous ring to it -- which pretty much defined most of what intrigued the man of late.  “I thought we were gonna fix?”

“And we shall. Doesn’t mean we can’t play the game first.”

Johnny sat on the bed and helped himself to a cigarette from the packet in the drawer. Patrick automatically lit it for him. Manners, that, Johnny thought, and he exhaled, eyeing the man’s profile through the plume of smoke. Always manners with him. It was the one thing Eleanor had spent any time at all bothering to teach him. His was the same profile he’d been eyeing since they were boys -- matured now, of course, his face refined with hollows and angles that left him looking ever more like the aristocrat he was meant to be. The boy was still there, of course, hiding beneath the grown-up drag, and suddenly, he imagined them both in the vineyards outside Patrick’s house that summer, _the_ summer, their faces flushed and Patrick’s dares growing ever riskier. Johnny could still feel the shift of the wooden well cover beneath his feet, his arms gripping onto the overhead beams, just waiting for the inevitable crack. Johnny had bailed, abruptly jumping off onto the ground, for fear of falling through. The look on Patrick’s face in that moment had been one of abject disappointment, as if Johnny’s completely understandable act of self-preservation had somehow been a personal affront. The look had stayed with Johnny, and it was there yet again in Patrick’s flat, as they stared into the bedside drawer.

“Fine,” he sighed. “What’s this game all about, then?”

Patrick cracked a sly smile, and clapped his hands together. “Excellent! It’s been ages since I’ve had anyone agree to play.”

“Not the best endorsement. Is it difficult to play?”

“Not in the slightest,” Patrick said, and sat down on the bed. “You simply close your eyes, like so,” he said, his own eyes shutting, “and reach right in.”

As he said this, Patrick put a hand into the drawer, scrabbled the pills around like a magician shuffling cards, and selected three pills at random. Eyes still closed, he shoved them into his mouth, clasped his hand out to Johnny blindly for the bottle and downed it in one go. Once all was swallowed, he opened his eyes and stretched his arms out with flourish, the magician concluding what he clearly considered to be a particularly crowd-pleasing trick. “Tada!”

Johnny stuttered for a moment. “Christ, Patrick -- what did you take?”

“What? Oh, I haven’t the foggiest.”

“You idiot -- there are a load of black bombers in there! You end up with three of those, you’re going to die of a heart attack!”

“Yes -- and if all three were Quaaludes, I’ll end up a puddle on the floor.” Patrick stepped onto the bed, and sat with his back flat against the headboard. “If they were all microdots, in about 20 minutes I’ll be hallucinating rabbits, and if they were all ecstasy tabs, I’ll spend the rest of the night telling you how very much I love you, John.” He leaned forward then, until his face, his beautiful, perfect face, was just inches away from Johnny’s. “That’s the fun of the game. You never know what to expect.”

“You’re a madman,” Johnny whispered.

“Well,” Patrick conceded. “Takes one to know one.”

His proximity was unnerving. Johnny stood up and walked toward the door, his pulse racing without any pharmaceutical assistance. “I’m not going to do it.” he said, with a shake of his head. “Someone’s got to call you an ambulance when your heart stops.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Patrick frowned, and shooed away the thought with a sweep of his neatly manicured hands. “With this big a stash, the odds of either one of us getting three of the same drug are statistically impossible.”

“Impossible? No. Even improbable is a stretch. Didn’t you tell me your marks in statistics were atrocious?”

“Until I sorted out how to cheat off Douglas Wynton-Smyth, yes, they were,” Patrick conceded, and took another pull from the bottle. He nodded towards the still-open drawer. “But my point remains: the likelihood is that you’ll get a mix of drugs, the effects of which will simply cancel each other out.”

“So my odds are either death or nothing?”

“Well, if you’re lucky, there _is_ a lovely sweet spot in between,” Patrick smiled, and bloody hell, the world turned a little brighter.  He nodded towards the still open bedside drawer. “It’s a gamble, Johnny. So why not go ahead and deal yourself in?”

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

They lay on their backs on the bed, their feet stretching close to the edge of the mattress.

 

“So what happens now?”

“Now we wait.”

“What do we do in the meantime?”

“Have a fix? Smoke a joint? Watch television?”

“In that order, then…”

 

Ten minutes later, they’d moved to the sitting room, a Road Runner cartoon playing on the telly. Johnny fell back, his head heavy, but still hyper aware of what he felt in his body -- or what he thought he felt - taking place in the spaces around the nicotine and the heroin.

The game’s challenge, as Patrick explained it, was simply having the daring to do it. Johnny, however, saw it as a sort of high stakes detective game: a “whatwasit” rather than a “whodunit”. Unfortunately, it was a game without any sort of winning reveal -- other than death, of course, but even that would remain a guessing game until the toxicology report. Assuming you were still alive, you could guess all you wanted at what you’d taken, but there couldn’t be any definitive proof that it was, in fact, Valium + Acid + Benzedrine that was making you trip balls. Johnny became aware of his forehead growing damp.

 

“Sweating, now. What’s that a side effect of?”

“Nothing. Everything. Stop trying to game this, John, and enjoy it. Look at the ridiculous dog, he’s been chasing that bird for twenty years.”

“It’s not a dog, it’s a coyote.”

“Yes, but actual roadrunners aren’t purple, are they? It’s all ridiculous.”

 

Patrick’s feet budged up against Johnny’s side, negotiating for more space on the sofa. Inevitably, they’d end up in Johnny’s lap, not that he minded. To be fair, Johnny didn’t mind much, when it came to Patrick. He never minded the late night phone calls, nor the last minute drug runs, nor the crashing on his couch, nor even the tagging along on holidays when his parents forgot to pick him up from school. He hadn’t even minded the random Gemmas and Elizabeths (although to be fair, they rarely lasted into the next week).

However, in spite of how it may have appeared, their friendship had always been quite reciprocal. Johnny had put up with Patrick’s frankly terrifying family, just as Patrick had put up with Johnny’s own different, but no less oppressive, parents. He always took Johnny’s side in disputes with friends, and could always be counted on in a fight. What’s more, when Johnny needed to make bail, Patrick had been right there for him -- nevermind the fact that by the time he finally had arrived, he’d been higher than a kite and ended up getting charged himself. 

Johnny had always felt bad about that, actually. Guilty. If he hadn’t called Patrick, he wouldn’t have been nicked. Nevermind the fact that Patrick wouldn’t have been nicked if he’d shown up sober. Of course, if they’d both abstained, neither would have been nicked at all, but the thought of that was absurd. After all, it had been their very first Last Big Hurrah, before they’d tried quitting together for the very first time. God, it had been ages ago.  

On the television, the Coyote barely missed the Road Runner, only to fall through a rock. He left behind nothing more than a puff of smoke and an outline of himself.

Johnny did his best not to draw any parallels.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

At first, he’d been mistaken for a servant’s child.

“You. Boy. Where is your mother?”

It had been the first thing David Melrose ever said to Johnny. He’d been twelve, his family renting a neighboring summer home in the South of France. He and Patrick met one morning in the vineyard, and had become fast friends before lunchtime. At some point, playing hide and seek in the house, Johnny had gotten lost amid the bright blue walls and twisted hallways, and was eventually drawn to the sound of piano music down the hall. The moment he entered the room, however, the music stopped.

“Are you deaf? The tea’s gone cold, boy,” Parick’s father had said without making eye contact. He nudged the tray toward him. “Take it to your mother downstairs.”

Sitting on the sofa years later, stoned seventy ways to Sunday, Johnny could still remember the way his spine had prickled in response. Why on earth he’d even thought of that, when the man’s son, now fully grown, was pleasantly - albeit, somewhat sloppily - sucking his cock?

In that moment, it didn’t take long for the unpleasant memory to drift away, particularly in light of Patrick’s efforts. He took Johnny fully into his obscenely gorgeous mouth -- and while the sight of him made Johnny positively weak, the feel of him was nothing short of heaven.

 

Patrick paused. “Sweet spot, then?”

Johnny gasped. “The sweetest, yes.”

“Lucky, Johnny, you are so lucky. God, and so am I.”

 

It didn’t happen often, no. It happened infrequently enough that Johnny would suddenly find himself pining - which, in and of itself, was insane. Patrick Melrose was certainly not the greatest lover Johnny had ever had - the man, in general, was often selfish, usually distracted and undeniably drawn to making bad decisions.  

But -- he sighed, running a hand through Patrick’s s hair -- he was also stunningly lovely.

Johnny had spent the better part of his life worrying about Patrick, worrying about Being Attracted To Patrick and worrying about the overarching theme of What Was The Deal With Patrick, Anyway? Was Johnny shallow enough to simply be attracted to Patrick’s beauty - and if so, was there something nefarious implied in the attraction? The one time Johnny had brought a white girl home, his Mother had, predictably, railed against “internalised post-colonial fascination with westernised beauty.” If that was, in fact, at play here - which he didn’t think it was - but if it was, it would certainly explain a lot. Patrick was, undeniably, the whitest man in all of London, raised by aristocrats who, had they been born in the previous century, would most certainly have been imperialists. Hell, even born in this century they were.

But that couldn’t be it. Patrick’s appeal wasn’t just in his looks. They were friends, after all. They cared for one another, and that had nothing to do with internalised anything. They depended on each other and they genuinely enjoyed each other’s company, even if Patrick could be a little mad sometimes. 

Of course, none of this should be interpreted as Johnny being in love with Patrick Melrose, or anything like that, no.

God no.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

Johnny nodded out after his second fix.

“You. Boy. Where is your mother?”

Frozen to the spot, Johnny had stammered, unsure how to respond. David, unfortunately, was already half a bottle of scotch past patience.

He stood slowly, towering over the boy, and pushed the dirty tea tray into his hands. “Idle wogs get their mothers fired. Am I understood?”   

It hadn’t been the first time Johnny had heard that word, but it had been the first time an adult had said it directly to him. He stared down at the tray unsure of what he should do, or even where the kitchen was in the first place, until a familiar voice shouted out from behind him.

“His mother doesn’t work here!”

Johnny turned to find Patrick in the doorway, his hair still damp with sweat from the summer heat.  

David swiveled his head, eyes narrowing. “Patrick?” 

“His name is Johnny and he’s my friend,” Patrick explained, out of breath. “His family’s here for the summer, just like us.”

In an instant, the room went silent. Johnny looked to Patrick and Patrick looked to his father and neither boy dared to breathe until, David did the most unexpected thing: he began to _laugh_. And not just a chuckle, not a chortle - it was a full, actual laugh. In fact, David doubled over with laughter, hands braced on his thighs, face going red. Once the laugh leveled off, he stood, wiping tears from his eyes before finally speaking.

“Oh, no, Patrick,” David said, shaking his head in great amusement. “Not like us. Very, very, definitively not like us.”

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

They lay on the sofa -- it was always the sofa in those days, never the bed, which was really quite fine - more often than not, proper sex wouldn’t be had, anyway, as one or the both of them were prone to nodding out. On this night, though, whatever mystery drugs they’d ingested had worked in their favour. They were both still breathing, at any rate. The television was still on - MTV now, instead of cartoons - which projected quickly-flashing pink and turquoise lights onto their bare skin. They barely registered the music, their pharmaceutically-enhanced focus trained solely on one another. Both open-mouthed, both hungry, both compelled to touch and taste and feel, as if the world would come apart if their fingers didn’t span every inch of the other. Johnny was impatient, but Patrick moved sweetly, carefully, and with great intent. He was curious, slowly teasing out responses from Johnny, delighted by the sounds that came out of his mouth.

 

“Be loud,” he said, daring him, “I don’t care what the neighbors think.”

“Fuck the neighbors,” Johnny huffed at first, then shouted at the top of his lungs, “FUCK THE NEIGHBORS!”

“Well, alright,” Patrick said, with a teasing, put-upon look, “But I’d much rather fuck you.”

 

Johnny pulled him on top of him, and with some shifting, aligned their already sticky erections. Johnny groaned, aching now from the contact, and hooked his hands around Patrick’s hips, holding him tight. Patrick gestured Johnny’s hands away, choosing instead to bend over his chest, and brace himself against the armrest, allowing them to lay face-to-face. With a slow, emphatic roll, they were precisely in sync.  

“I feel like I could go on forever,” Patrick whispered, “let’s never stop,” and kissed him on the forehead, on the nose, on the lips and on his chin.  

If it had been anyone but Patrick, Johnny would’ve found it positively romantic.

Because it was Patrick, Johnny credited the drugs.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

They woke up the next day just before three, their legs tangled, their clothing littering the floor and the TV still on. Patrick roused first, and reached for a cigarette. Johnny lit it for him, this time. His mother had, after all, taught him manners as well. 

“See, I told you,” Patrick mumbled, and tipped the remains of half-empty beer bottle into his mouth. “We’re both still here. Neither of us were ever in any real danger. Utterly impossible odds.” 

He held out the bottle to Johnny, and Johnny drank, contemplating Patrick’s words, while at the same time, hearing the voice of Patrick’s father rattling somewhere deep inside. What on earth would that man think, Johnny wondered, if he could see them as they were right how -- Patrick and Johnny, sleeping on the same sofa, drinking from the same bloody beer? Would he still see them as so very, very different? To someone like David, Johnny knew the thought of their very friendship was wholly absurd -- but the thought of something more?

Sod it, Johnny thought. Sod David and all he stood for. Why did he even care? Patrick certainly didn’t, and he’d grown up with the bloody bastard. So sod doubt. Sod fear. Sod bloody impossible. 

Johnny sat up suddenly, and gripped Patrick’s hand. “Improbable, not impossible,” he corrected, and lifted his hand, kissing his knuckle sweetly. “Improbable.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> END NOTES
> 
> \- The game was taken straight from Edward St. Aubyn's life, and while it was not necessarily referred to by that name, nor an activity he necessarily shared with friends, it was nonetheless a real-life practice of St. Aubyn's. [The practice was detailed in this article](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/02/inheritance).  
> \- This work was written with one line from [an interview](http://starrymag.com/prasanna-puwanarajah-patrick-melrose/) with Prasanna Puwanarajah (who plays Johnny) in mind. To me, it perfectly encapsulates these men, and creates a perfect space upon which to build a ship: _"It’s a relationship based on wit and irony, but also on honesty and love over decades of time."_
> 
> When I started writing this, there were zero fics in the fandom on AO3 -- now we've hit double digits! Thank you for reading this, and for staying with me in this world for a little longer.  
> <3  
> vex.


End file.
